Helping a friend who has hired multiple 'tech$' to try to resolve issues his (home) office with only a strained wallet to show for it. I found 3 computers w/ drive recognition ( or non-recognition) problems.  A COUPLE had some bad sectors and were repaired. 1 (HP) is relatively new but wont load XP pro (non OEM, w/ different drive) or even recognize the original drive.  Original drive seems to be intact as I can view the restore partitions and regular c: volume on a different computer.  A 2nd computer was running and then stopped shortly after a back-up.  It also won't seem to recognize and drives (original had bad sectors, others were OK) I kept getting a 'NTLD (?)' not present error (or something close)  Is this a drive issue, or could it be BIOS/motherboard related.  Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated (PS. I also have not tested the ELECTRIC, but the office was recently re-wired.  Voltage variance cooked components?)

thanks much for any insight or comments.Could you perhaps number the drives and put behind them what the problem is? Easier to post suggestions for each driive that way.

Just to be certain: Have you checked to see if all the jumpers and IDE cables are properly connected?PC <2>http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm   .....pc <1> go in to the bios del key on boot  and see if the hard drive thanks rapton and merlin for the replies.  both the jumpers and BIOS configs were ok.

After much investigation and a call to an IT friend, my efforts were in vain on the drive i really needed the data from.  It's 'coming apart' in his words.

As far as the other drives, the NTLDR  error was he NT loader file, which is a boot file that fortunately can be copied from another computer.

the third drive is also a victim to the phyical failure.  However if ANYONE in privy to a kick *censored* data recovery program (NOt too spendy) please to inform. Most of the bad sectors I came across with a basic data recovery program were in  the first 2% of the drive ( boot sector I'm assuming) The real data i need should be SOMEWHERE else. (specifically Outlook contacts and past e-mails)  I do have an XP back-up of the system on another drive, but can't restore them (target error, not using the same computer) and I can't seem to access them from the back-up.  Any help here is also great appreciated.  Thanks again
A while ago I read, on this forum that mounting the HDD upside down relieves some stress of the reading arm. It may help you recover files.http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm